The Art of War by Sun Tzu, Chapter Six: Vacuity and Substance

[kimberlysteele]

The scene: Inside Thornton's (gas station) in the suburbs of Chicago.

Her: You need to put on a mask!
Me: I don't do that.
Her: There's a MANDATE! You have to wear a mask!
Me: I know about the mandate. I'm not going to wear a mask. Do you want me to pay for my gas or not?
Her: (blood boiling) YOU... You check out with her... gestures to the young woman behind plexiglass at the register.

A pleasant transaction ensued. I gave the cashier my money, she made change, I thanked her, and I was on my merry way.

Sun Tzu says whoever occupies the battleground first and awaits the enemy will be at ease; whoever occupies the battleground afterward and must race to the conflict will be fatigued.

When I encounter a maskturbator like the gas station manager at Thornton’s, unlike the maskturbator, I am calm and ready. I know the battleground, I understand exactly why I am at war, and I am ready to be hauled off and murdered if necessary because of the courage of my convictions. Death means nothing to me. I am not afraid of it. The gas station manager had no such advantages. She was a terrified, cowed, petty dictator clinging to what little vestiges of power were afforded to her via a mandate. I can almost guarantee she hates her job and everything about it, including customers like me who stand up for their Constitutional rights. She is not ready to die and unlike me, she has made no peace with death, otherwise she would not wear a talismanic binky on her face because the government tells her it will prevent a pathetically non-lethal disease.

The approach outlined above, despite its innocuousness, is a way of forcing the enemy out into the open. We have gotten to a point where showing one’s naked face in a gas station is an act of civil disobedience against the tyrannical State. By demonstrating to the petty tyrant of Thornton’s I would not be moved, she was forced to expose the weakness of her cherished mandate.

I formed a group in early 2021 on Facebook called Speakeasy Illinois to support the owners of businesses and establishments like my own Kimberly Steele Studio that do not force anyone (employees or customers) to be injected with experimental gene modifiers or to wear masks. The group grew from 2 people in February to its current 4400 members today. The army I have amassed is mostly a secret one. The attacks are subtle and quiet. Members send reports from the front lines of which stores, gyms, and offices are face-friendly and which are not. We have our own bits of dialect: “patriot” or “patriotic” means there is zero pressure to mask or vax. FD means face diaper, which is lingo for the mask.

We strike when the enemy least expects us — one of the primary rules of Speakeasy Illinois is to avoid maskturbator/vaxturbator establishments in favor of their patriotic counterparts. Our main weapon against the proto-communists is to ghost their stores and ditch their venues. Nothing scares a maskturbator who complies with government orders (hoping to trade what freedoms they have left) like an empty house. Though many of my soldiers have wanted me to help them create harassment campaigns of going into mask-insistent stores and screaming “you’d better take my money!” it’s not an approach I endorse.

Ghosting their venues works like a charm. There is a theater where I live that puts on live musicals. Their most recent stunt has been to insist that every person walking in the door shows proof of vaccination. Their strategy has gone over like a lead balloon and now they find themselves struggling to put butts in seats. To pretend that it isn’t happening, they have resorted to giving tickets away for free in order to put bodies in chairs. Despite being in a state run by a lunatic leftist emperor-governor, we have put them in a position of either stopping their vaccine nonsense or going out of business. Sadly it looks like they will choose the latter.

This is what maskturbator panic looks like

“If I do not want to engage in combat, even though I merely draw a line on the ground and defend it, he will not be able to engage me in battle because we thwart his movements.”

The line in the sand I draw and encourage my Speakeasy infantry to draw is one of politeness. No matter what the enemy spews, no matter how rabid or stupid they act, we don’t sink to their level. We hold our heads high and proud. If the maskturbator absolutely insists, we loudly say “NO SALE!” and leave the establishment, preferably with a smile. Had the ridiculous Thornton’s manager called the police on me, I would have politely stepped outside the store, waited for the police, and then handed them the cash or card to take inside to the register person. Had the police arrested me and hauled me off to jail, I would let them make an example of me in order to use the outrage to further my cause. I am always ready to strike where they are vulnerable, shifting like water to avoid the substantial and strike the vacuous.

Our members show up in stores constantly without masks, which gives us the advantage of hollowing out the enemy via amorphous psychological warfare. Courage is infectious. My members constantly report others taking off their masks because they see us doing it in public. The enemy only knows how to hate and fear. They destroy and suffer the blowback of destruction; we build and enjoy the effects of construction.

Comments

[kimberlysteele]

My group is not all that friendly towards people who choose to wear masks. The problem with the mask is that it is a symbol of leftist hegemony more than a functional item. So those who wear it become symbols whether they know they're doing it or not. I don't allow people to shame others for wearing a mask in my group. Sometimes we have to conform. For instance, many people will be fired from their jobs if they don't mask up. That said, I'm fairly clear: I stand against the people who wear masks when they are not forced to do so. It's like my veganism. I stand against people who eat animals and I occasionally make fun of them for doing it. Nevertheless, I realize I am not likely to change them and it's not my job to browbeat them into making the decision that was right for me. As far as Sun Tzu, I'm pretty sure he talks about that but I forget which chapter at the moment.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for your considered answer. It's unfortunate that we're all reduced to favoring select versions of evidence that solidifies positions and pits us against each other, as though we each aren't symbolic of some sort of hegemony.

That, "I stand against the people who wear masks when they are not forced to do so" rather than organizing with those who reject the policies of force is your position, says a lot about humans' innate tendency to ... well, I'm not sure I should say demonize, but certainly otherize and exclude, other people (even those who are exercising their freedom of choice which is ostensibly the point around which your battleground is drawn).

Although, beam in my eye, and all that - I admit, I don't feel particularly compelled to organize in solidarity with those who belittle me with name-calling.

Best of luck, and if it's something you envision, I hope your group makes a positive contribution toward protecting people's rights and healing our social divisions.

[kimberlysteele]

I constantly organize with those who reject forced policies, so I'm not sure I understand your point. I do empathize with those who must wear masks because their bosses force them or because they have to obey to board a plane or visit a hospital. The essay is about building the morale of people who stand against creeping totalitarianism.

I think what you are reluctant to look at here is your own role as a conformist and how that conformity firms up the narrative of mask mandates. This happens whether you like it or not. I don't hate you in the slightest for wearing a mask, just as I don't hate people for eating eggs, cheese, and meat. I just wish you wouldn't; you don't have to.

[(Anonymous)]

I was not careful in my wording. Yes, I see that you are organizing with those who reject forced policies/policies of force. What I wished to point out was that your stance against those who wear masks (not by compulsion but by (however misguided) choice) denies you potential allies who wish to resist coercive governance but who, by your own defining name-calling are to be mocked and reviled. In that stance-against, you entrench a binary through your deliberate belittling. What kind of morale is built by that? Superiority?

I have thought about my conformity and I recognize there's overlap between what I think is a helpful choice for the commons (given life-experience in crowded/polluted countries where mask wearing is a common response to respiratory threats), what is being mandated to our long-term detriment, and conformity to family-members' desires (given higher risk for some), so I'm not sure what to say there other than the government can go (unDruidly-word) itself with these things that just make us all draw lines against each other.

And that I will now stop whining about being "bullied on the playground" because it sounds stupid.

I've always had a hard time applying Sun Tzu to my own experiences, so I applaud you for making a go at it with yours.

[kimberlysteele]

Thanks for clarifying. I am superior to those who wear masks out of fear. So yes, I am trying to build morale via what I presume is my superiority. I often call meat eaters necrovores. It's straight up name calling and I don't find it to be problematic. I am not always nice. I try to be blunt and to the point: maskturbator is a great word for that. It doesn't mean I hate anyone or want them to be prevented from wearing their masks in a free environment. The whole reason I am bluntly naming with the maskturbator meme (that I did not invent, necrovore however is a term I coined) is because of government overreach: if we give an inch lately, the government takes a mile. So I don't budge.

Did you follow John Michael Greer's book club on Dion Fortune's The Cosmic Doctrine? Many of my essays on the Art of War, including this one, expand upon Cosmic Doctrine and the concept of evil within that book.

Thank you for your compliments. Another great book for applying Sun Tzu to regular life is The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.